Day 7: Kutaisi

When we woke up this morning in Kutaisi we found it was wet outside. Very wet.

We went down to explore breakfast in the hotel. The owner is overly friendly and demanded to have my phone to take a picture of us during breakfast. I was in the middle of chewing an incredibly dry bean pastry, so this was not really a good time, but he was undeterred.

Our plan was to head out and start exploring Kutaisi at 10am. When 10am came around, however, the rain was so strong that we decided to wait around until 10.30 to see whether things improved. The wait was livened up by a sudden power cut in the hotel! But the rain did lighten up a little bit, so we set off.

We walked up the road our hotel is off, then crossed the road via a zebra crossing decorated with flowers.

We were then in a central park, which was damp but very pretty.

We took shelter under this columned structure...

...to take photos of the Colchis fountain, whose design is inspired by jewellery found at archaeological sites around Georgia.

It's very interesting but it's in the middle of a traffic island on a busy road, so it was a bit challenging to get good pictures of it.

The other attractive building in this square is a theatre. Again, difficult to get a good photo of it without cars in, which is why it looks like I've missed the bottom of it off.

We took shelter in a McDonalds on the other side of the square, so I could get an iced coffee to help my throat. Luckily there was a McDonalds sign in the Latin alphabet as well as the Georgian alphabet, because we would definitely not have known where we were from this sign alone!

As we came out of McDonalds and walked past the theatre again, I realised we could see Kutaisi's cathedral - the Bagrati cathedral - on a hill slightly outside the town centre. That was going to be one of our destinations for today.

But first, we walked into the park...

...admired random monuments in it...

...and took a rather damp selfie.

It was actually a really nice park; I'm sure it would be lovely on a sunnier day.

We explored the local market, then crossed to the other side of the river via a bridge called the Chain Bridge.

The river was looking increasingly angry with all the rain.

Once we were on the other side of the river we began walking upwards towards the cathedral and soon had some nice views back down towards the town.

The road was steep and winding.

We passed a wine cellar which was advertising wine in multiple different languages.

A sign on the wall confirmed that we were heading in the right direction, as we continued to climb upwards.

When we finally got to the cathedral, it was impressive.

The cathedral was originally built here in the 11th century, but suffered a lot of damage over the centuries (in particular being blown up by the Ottomans).

Today it has been restored and we were able to go inside and admire more beautiful icons.  There would have been great views of Kutaisi from up here if the weather had been better.

By the time we'd finished exploring the cathedral it was so wet that we decided to get a taxi back into the centre of Kutaisi for lunch rather than walk back down. We thought the McDonalds we'd been to earlier would be a good location to choose as our destination, as it was pretty central. Helen booked for us via the Bolt app, which unfortunately auto-suggested a McDonalds which was a few kilometres outside the town centre. We only realised once we were sitting in the taxi and the journey began to take slightly longer than we expected... Never mind, we got an interesting tour around the suburbs of Kutaisi, then booked a second taxi back to the correct McDonalds. This second driver attempted some small-talk with me in Russian, so that was interesting!

Once back in the centre of Kutaisi, we went to a restaurant recommended by the hotel owner. Helen had khinkali dumplings filled with mushrooms, while Mom and I shared kubdari, a sort of bready pie filled with meat.  Dad's meal was similar, but filled with beans and topped with ham.

It was all very filling! The rain had really picked up while we were having lunch and when we ventured outside again, it felt like the roads had turned into rivers.

There doesn't seem to be a very sophisticated drainage system in Georgia, so water was running down drainpipes and then literally pouring out into the streets, flooding the pavements.

While Mom and Dad ventured into a shopping centre, Helen and I went back to the hotel to spend the afternoon attempting to dry out our clothes...!